by rote
by Phoenix Satori
Summary: More cliches than you can shake a stick at. ::Derek/Casey::
1. selective aphasia

[it's a-me! the-a-disclaimer!]

* * *

On the ride home, she keeps him awake by way of viciously scolding him for his Legendary Idiocy, a harangue which is sporadically punctuated by the garbled challenges of an inebriated moron –an insolence she tolerates only because it means he's still conscious and alert.

Or, not alert so much as irritated and incoherent. But definitely conscious, at least. She's willing to count this as a victory.

The curious part, the one snagging component of this Normal-Albeit-Infuriating situation, the Inconsequential Thing tugging insistently at the subliminal importance chord in her brain every time it happens (and it _keeps happening_)...is the way he keeps saying her name.

There's nothing remarkable about _how_ he says it; there are familiar notes of both chiding and exasperation discernible in the cadence of it. The vexing thing is, even saturated in alcohol as he is –and in spite of potentially debilitating head wounds— she has discovered that her name is consistently the only word he can say _correctly_, clearly, brief lucidity surfacing only long enough for him to breathe 'Casey' before he slips effortlessly back into slurring every syllable into nonsensical gibberish.

Casey McDonald is a girl incapable of _not_ reading into any and every little thing that happens in her life, so when her happily intoxicated boob of a step-brother fumbles every sound he makes except the ones that define her, she can't help but to entertain the thought that it might not be the 'same difference,' after all.

* * *

I don't even know what the hell to tell you at this point.

I wish I knew where this was going.

However, the men in my Control Tower appear to have all hurled themselves from said tower to their Unpleasantly Squishy deaths, so I've just got no clue what in the dudderflip is going on.

Enjoy!


	2. creature of id

OH DEAR GOD IT HAS TAKEN OVER MY BRAIN.

[fourscore and twenty-seven disclaimers ago...]

* * *

She slides the keys into the lock, and freezes when Derek folds himself around her, arms snaking across her hips and tickling over her stomach, locking her into him while he deftly nudges her hair out of the way and catches her ear lobe neatly between his teeth.

"Der--!" She starts, and then bites her lip when his tongue skims the line of her jaw, terminating at the corner of her mouth, which she has inadvertently turned into the ministration. With an intensity that genuinely frightens her, he winds her around in his embrace and backs her into the door, knee braced between her thighs when he leans in.

To kiss her.

It feels wrong, it feels so completely wrong to indulge, to _let_ him, for so very, very many reasons. Because he's drunk, because this (probably-definitely) means nothing, because there's a chance he won't even remember it, because he steals her things and kissed Icky Vicky and threw meatloaf at her and has no sense of shame and makes her life a _living hell_, because they're _family _–but in the forever second before his lips touch hers, he whispers her name like it makes him ache to say it (and then one or two other things that don't come out nearly as coherently as he likely imagined they had); the shape of her name is muscle memory, the exact geometries recorded, embedded, internalized, rehearsed a million-million times, now an articulation of reckless intent. Casey decides she should be running away now, as fast as her legs can carry her.

Instead, she kisses him back.

This, too, feels a lot like muscle memory, like remembering where to fit together with something she once –or always—had, even though she never actually…_had_. If she weren't absolutely, positively certain that they'd never done this before, she might now be compelled to _believe_ they had.

"Casey," he breathes, grasping at her hips to slide her along his thigh while she slips in shock and catches herself against the doorknob, "Case…" Twisting instinctively where her hand lands, they fall backward together, tumbling through the door into darkness, and the consequent groping separation lasts just long enough for her to draw in a panicked breath before she stops breathing altogether at the gliding touch of his hand against the bare skin of her stomach. It doesn't linger; in the instant following, Derek's hands tangle into her hair, drawing her toward him with a possessive, steady strength that defies the level of his intoxication. (Which, for the record, has clearly reached the Psychosis Plateau, whereat such well-loved, preventative safeguards as Rhyme, Reason, and Inhibition are all apparently unwelcome and therefore, conspicuously absent.)

There's no reticence or uncertainty in the soft, starving way he kisses her, no hint of compunction or humility when he finds a wall to crowd her back against, teeth at her throat, no indication of thought for their family ties as Derek pulls her into him in a manner that is decidedly un-brotherly, her name now a hoarse, desperate plea.

She feels her lower lip bleeding where she's bitten through it in attempt to hold in the mewling whimper that wants to come screaming out of her when he touches her, and she frantically tries to organize her thoughts from the myriad shattered, unsalvageable pieces they've broken into, only to be thwarted by his mouth mapping a path from the arch of her throat to the curve of her jaw, her hands already stealing over skin, under cloth.

_Stopstopmuststop_ is on loop in Casey's brain, the single, urgent strand of thought the one thing keeping her from drowning in sensation. If he would only _stop touching her_ for one godforsaken moment, she could attempt to yoke her mind into remembering that Derek is currently experiencing technical difficulties, and that in a lifetime of stalwart Do-Goodery, she's currently engaged in an activity that is horribly-terribly-very-badly _wrong_.

He kisses her again, and it tastes copper-tart and bitter, like blood, line gin.

Her name scrapes from his throat, and there is impossible awareness in his liquor-addled gaze, thoughtful recognition behind the wild mindlessness that has her inexplicably choking back a sob.

She pushes him away.

* * *

I should definitely be working right now.

This is just to say I love yous guys for the _USteps_ prodding; I'm stuck on it but I'm working it out, slowly.

In the interim, I offer steamy (quasi-)sexitiemz.

Ryan Seacrest, you crazy honky.


	3. en bloc

We'll see how long this break-neck updating speed can be maintained.

I don't know where the hell this is all coming from, but the momentum does not presently appear to be stoppable.

I haven't even told you whether or not they're at home or university.

...I'll figure that out and let you know when I've decided.

[i've always hated you the most, disclaimer.]

* * *

The first word out of his mouth:

"Casey—" He freezes, tears himself upright in time to see Casey stiffening across the room, fingers stilling where she's pulling a button through fabric. On her skirt. Something wrenches hard and fast in his gut, and not even he has any clue how he manages not to blow chunks on the spot. "Jesus, Casey—"

Head spinning, body aching, he jerks out from underneath the comforter and starts toward her at somewhere between a sprinting and a leaping pace, managing not to destroy himself or any furniture in the process purely by the good graces of a benevolent god.

When he reaches her, he tries to say her name again, inflection heavy with both horror and apology, but the fact that he's vertical appears to have finally caught up with his Hangover, which brusquely insists that he lie down again. Immediately. He remembers tipping, but after that it's just a very strange, very spinning-y moment followed by coming around to the sight of Casey for the second time. _This morning_.

"Derek, Derek are you okay? Derek?" This time, however, his face is in her lap. It takes another long moment of puzzling out his view of the ceiling and Casey's face and the feeling of obsessively-conditioned hair brushing his cheek before he puts all these pieces together. "Derek?" Fingers, sliding through hair, skimming ear, trembling against pec—"_De-rek_!" –slapping soundly against cheek—

"_Ouch!_ What the _hell_?!" It feels a lot like she'd landed a spinning jump-kick to his head.

"Phew," she breathes, relieved, which makes him feel like he's missing something here, since when the hell does someone trying to _crack open his skull_ ever merit _relief_? "Thought maybe you'd gotten a concussion or something after all. We probably should stop by the doctor again later, just to check. You fell down an awful lot last…last night."

"You were afraid I had a concussion, so you _hit_ me in the _face_?" Casey startles, sheepish, flushing guiltily. Then, she thinks better of it and lapses into awkward arrogance.

"Sometimes to fix the tv, you have to give it a good smack." In spite of himself, he cracks a grin, amused. She lifts her chin primly.

That's when he sees the hickey. Already darkening, it looks stark next to the pale cream of her neck, the soft blue of her blouse. He reaches up to touch it, wonderingly.

"Casey." He deadpans, at once gravely serious. "What happened last night?" She blinks down at him like she'd been expecting him not to remember.

"You got very, very drunk, and I generously took you home." She says it like she's been practicing the line carefully for half an hour. "You were very…difficult." His eyes hone in on the unmistakable bruise.

"Did I—did we--?"

"No." She announces, and there's no 'like' about it. She's hiding something.

"What did I _do_, Casey?" Little tremors wrack the foundations of his fleshy headrest. She's this whole tightly-packed human cannonball-worth of tension, threatening to explode.

"You…" She looks straight at him. "You didn't do anything at all." He searches her face for The Tell and can't find it. "You weren't _easy_ to wrestle up here, but you didn't do anything you don't normally do, either." Lie. Lie, lie, _lie_. She's _lying_ to him.

"_Casey_…" He growls, noticing that it does…_something_ to her whenever he says her name. "_This_ wasn't here when I picked you up last night." He cups an unsteady palm over the hickey, hiding it from view. "I—"

"You didn't do it. It wasn't you. I met someone last night. He's a musician." She appears to be gaining steam on this one, spooling the first, small-ish lie into one epic, novel-length prevarication. "His name's…Blake. Porter. Blake Porter. He's from Vancouver. And, and we _were_ having a nice conversation until you _fell down the stairs_—"

"I fell down the _stairs_? Jesus, Case. Why didn't you take me to the hospital?"

"Wrist, dummy." She nudges something plastic against his arm and he lifts it to see a hospital identification tag wrapped around it. He aims a bemused glance up at her. "It was a long night."

"Apparently." And then there's silence, heavy, horrible silence filled with the alarming impression that he knows what Casey _tastes_ like.

He doesn't understand that he's staring at her until,

"Stop it. Don't make me slap you again."

"Casey." There's that flustered fidgeting again, he notes, frowning. "I didn't…" He falters, swallowing bile. "Please tell me I didn't force—" She moves abruptly, and his head freefalls to the floor.

"_Nothing happened_." She snaps, and there is fierce challenge in her eyes, daring him to question her.

Naturally, he obliges, warily pulling himself upright so he can watch the revealing play of expressions on her face. Intuition tells him she wouldn't still be here if he'd forced her into anything, and he seriously doubts she'd express such (admittedly odd and painful) concern for his well-being if he'd perpetrated any considerable wrong against her. If she's going to continue insisting that 'nothing happened' when all evidence points to the contrary, then…

"Unless…" Something wicked flickers in his own gaze as a funny thought occurs to him, "you didn't take advantage of _me_, did'ja, sis?"

She slams his door shut when she leaves (read: 'flees'), and Derek has the feeling this is going to be the Best Day Ever.

* * *

DID THEY SLEEP TOGETHER?! DIDN'T THEY?! WAS CASEY ABLE TO HOLD HERSELF BACK?! WHY THE HELL WAS SHE IN HIS BEDROOM REDRESSING IF SHE DID?!

All these questions (and many, many more, I'm sure)...currently lack answers. I haven't gotten that far yet. We'll see.

next chapter: more adult-type touching, to the tune of Casey's Impending Aneurysm.

(we have reached optimum caffeination, captain.)


	4. dissociative state

(Yous guyses reviews are kicking my ass in the best way.)

Shorter chapter, but the next one should be somewhat lengthier. I'll probably have it up sometime tomorrow or the day after, since this story has apparently become a raging monstrosity plot-wise and will not be made to wait.

The cliches will begin to _layer_ as we go along, forming a kind of grim-camp trifle. Prepare yourselves.

[disclaimers? we don't need no stinking disclaimers!]

* * *

When he's finally able to set aside his initial irreverent delight at her expense, Derek contemplates the order of a universe poised on the threshold of oblivion.

He spends the latter half of his morning Hair-of-the-Dogging it on the sofa, dumbly trying to process the irreconcilable notion that, regardless of who'd started it and how it'd gone down, and in thoughtless spite of whatever apocalyptic cosmic calamity was now inevitably about to befall the world because of it, he and Casey had…had…_happened_ last night.

Which is plenty enough to freak the ever-living hell out of him, even without the shocking evidence he'd uncovered in the course of the cursory investigation he'd groggily undertaken shortly after she'd evacuated (once he'd convinced his stomach it was safe to be upright, anyway, strength of will alone –more or less—reasserting his fritzing equilibrium).

In order to avoid having to deal with it, he'd _intended_ to postpone thinking about Last Night until after he'd had a nice, long, hot shower, and he'd been doing fairly well keeping his mind focused exclusively on the throbbing pain in his skull, where his brain was being merrily pounded into jelly by the Hangover Fairy. And then he'd passed the hallway mirror, absently glancing askance at his reflection to assess his approximate scruff quotient, glibly sliding past it to continue on his shuffling path toward the restroom.

Until he'd paused, cocking his head neatly to one side, bemused and pensive, and stepped carefully back into view of the mirror.

It had taken him a solid minute to decide he didn't entirely believe what his eyes were showing him.

A parallel trinity of thin, pink score marks limned the crest of his shoulder, dragging unevenly down the length of his shoulder blade. Derek remembers closing his eyes against the weight of the implication, only to be waylaid in that shuttered instant by a jarring, split-second frame of Casey's mouth soundlessly forming the architecture of his name, head thrown back against the wall, breath racing, accompanied by an unexpected lance of residual, tingling heat burning low in his gut.

And then blackness, where the gaping hole in his memory of Last Night shoves back into place.

He'd stared blankly at the wall, bracing himself for one slow, existentially exhausting moment, waiting for the sky to come crashing down around him, because okay, fine. It had not been some sort of awesome nightmare, after all.

It had actually happened.

Like…for real.

When the planet refused to explode in acknowledgment of the magnitude of this new infamy, continuing to spin on uninterrupted, sun continuing to climb over its horizon, birds continuing to chirp their head-splitting morning symphonies like Derek Venturi and Casey McDonald hooking up was actually not as freakishly huge a deal as he knows it is, he'd started to laugh, at first nervously, little burbling chuckles of ironic disbelief, transitioning organically past weird panic into hysterical amusement.

Half-an-hour and one slipshod once-over of his apartment later, he finds himself slumped onto his couch, sipping mechanically at a beer, incredulous as he stares, captivated, at two dark buttons he's laid out on the long table in front of the tv –buttons he recognizes as having come from the blouse Casey'd been wearing Last Night and, somewhat more crookedly, This Morning.

Derek chokes the life out of the alarming impulse to break out into a wide, stupid grin, and begins the frantic, groping process of probing back in his mind, reaching for the last thing he remembers from Last Night...

* * *

So...not as much 'adult-type touching' as I'd expected. But this thing has kind of developed a will of its own and is working its way up to full-blown sentience, and I'm learning to stop trying to tell it where to go.

Next Chapter: Flashbacks a-plenty, folks; a small portion of 'Last Night' is REVEALED. Captain Planet cameos.

No, really.


	5. pseudologia fantastica

(No, not really.)

This chapter brought to you by _my_ car's passenger-side door, which _also_ won't open from the inside.

And also the Impending Movie, which appears as though it's going to be horribly depressing for us Dasey-folk.

Also.

I warned you this was evolving into something horrifying.

[mama always said disclaimers was like a heaping box of sh-t.]

* * *

Casey demands that he explain himself at once.

Derek just sits there, key in the ignition, listening to the radio and staring dead ahead until Casey finally growls out a 'very funny, Derek,' after which she primly commands him to get his (quote:) 'happy little butt' moving immediately, come over to her side of the vehicle to let her free, and then kindly get the hell out of the way so they can be rid of each other as quickly as possible. He smiles serenely and continues blithely and pointedly ignoring her, mouthing the words to the song blaring out of the speakers until she snaps the radio off and glares at him in a manner he supposes she's probably convinced herself is Very Imposing.

Mostly she just looks insane and infuriatingly hot. Which is a combination he keeps telling himself he'll get used to eventually.

"Derek," she begins, and he concludes that any lesser man might be snapped in half by the sheer force of her gaze. "Get _out_ of this car and come _open my door_." He gazes steadily back at her, half-smiling even though he's _supposed_ to be affecting nonchalance.

"No." He says, slowly, almost giddy with the taste of it. She looks like she might be Counting to Ten. He stifles his laughter because he knows good and well that you do not _laugh_ at crazy people on the verge of a full-blown psychotic break. That's how situations like _Carrie_ happen. "I think we should stay here, kick back, listen to some tunes, check out the scenery, have a little good ol'-fashioned 'sibling bonding.'"

Last week, Casey'd clued _all three_ of his latest catches in to the existence of the others, and he'd ended up losing them all in one fell swoop. It'd been the first time he'd attempted to juggle so many girls at once on a semi-regular basis, and Casey had _ruined_ the experiment.

In the wake of this astonishing trilogy of disaster_, _Derek has been experiencing an unprecedented dry spell, no doubt thanks to Casey's dogged publicity efforts and rallying Female Solidarity sermons, both of which he suspects strongly had been designed specifically to drag the good Venturi name through the mud.

So maybe this is just him returning the favor.

As far as he can tell, Casey can't be more than a bag of pork rinds and a pair of binoculars away from fully _stalking_ this tall, foreign meathead who rarely spares the effort to acknowledge she exists and has –by his count—called her by probably every girl's name there is except her own. Derek has used this ploy often enough to recognize it for what it is: sound –if amateur—strategy bolstered by genuine interest. More for the consistently clumsy abuse of his craft than for any Other reason, Derek is not a fan of Casey's most recent infatuation (the first she's had since university'd started –the first since Jessie'd casually wondered how it could be that she hadn't _known_ their short-lived romance was 'just a meaningless summer fling').

* * *

The afternoon prior, at some point during the Capitals' harrowing 7-2 victory over the Maple Leafs, one of Casey's roommates –her tiny, scary, Jenny-roommate—had phoned him with the following curt warning:

"_Casey's making her move tomorrow night, Venturi. Screw this up for her and I will wear your teeth as jewelry. Shall I make with the more colorful threats, or do we have an understanding?"_

(He doesn't know what it is about Casey that makes all her close female friends so vindictively protective of her; he knows from extensive personal experience that, while prone to dramatic fits of wild, inexplicable madness, Casey McDonald is perfectly capable of taking care of herself.)

Derek had agreed to drive Casey to this party a couple of weeks ago, so even without the heads up, he'd have known the instant he saw her that she was Prepared for Battle: she'd climbed into his car reeking of vanilla, hair perfectly coiffed, sporting a sleek, scandalous number that tapered over a scrap of fabric which, given another couple inches, may actually have qualified as a skirt –and then, of course, was that blue goddamn eye-glitter; a dead giveaway that she's got a Guy to Impress to anyone who knows her even remotely well.

(And sometimes, when he's on the cusp of dreamless sleep and had enough to drink that he no longer has the wherewithal to maintain the steady burble of Denials Regarding Casey—it occurs to him that he probably knows her better than anyone else she's ever met.)

* * *

So. Casey has willfully and maliciously been cock-blocking him at every turn since the beginning of the semester (or, er…anyway, since the beginning of last week). And yesterday morning, his passenger door had mysteriously stopped opening from the inside (who could believe the bad luck?). Inexplicably, two hours after he'd made this Most Unfortunate discovery, the passenger-side window lever had snapped cleanly off its spindle, the angle of fracture curiously evocative of premeditation –though obviously Derek is blameless of such gross misconduct.

Later, after careful reflection, Derek had determined these elements combined could have been nothing short of divine invitation to visit unholy retribution unto this girl so singularly bound-and-determined to see him brought low. Fate has ordained that he reciprocate his romantic misfortunes in kind, and he has accepted this mission with gracious ardor.

"_Derek_," she begins, voice low and steady and cold, "if I'm not out of this car and on my way in to that party in the next _minute_, I will, I'll, I'll—"

"You'll, you'll _what_, Case? Write me an angry letter? Draw up a list of all the things that tick you off about_ 'De-rek_?'" She's got that darling-dangerous, 'I'm-going-to-laugh-while-you-die' twinkle in her eyes again, a sort of smoldering look that suggests she's inches away from ending his life herself.

"I'm warning you, Derek; tonight is _so_ not the night."

"There another night that's better for you, princess? Wanna pencil in an inconvenience for next Friday, then? I'm free if you've got important plans I can ruin." He slants her a sly, sideways grin. Casey smacks him in the arm.

"Hey-hey, let's keep our protests peaceful, little sister." She frowns at him.

"Pacifism is for people who don't have to put up with _you_." Pause. "And stop _calling_ me that." This, too, has been part of his ongoing research project. Since she'd drawn the Brady Sibling Line-in-the-Sand in their kitchen last summer, he'd been exploring all the new borders in their relationship (i.e. 'forced affiliation'), wondering if her coy-confident declaration and his begrudging acknowledgment actually _meant_ anything. She'd stopped correcting people when they called him her 'brother,' and to demonstrate how perfectly amenable he was to this arrangement, he'd started regularly using their sibling labels to try and unsettle her –only to find, some several weeks after the fact, that his bitter-playful retaliation had, horrifyingly, resulted in a virtually campus-wide misconception that he and Casey were _actually_ related.

When it'd finally dawned on Casey that the 'step-'s had all fallen away, that to the world of Queens the Derek-and-Casey dynamic had been stripped of its defining characteristic, shorn of its bitter conflicts and painful complications and reduced to textbook Sibling Rivalry, she'd immediately picked up the habit of demanding that he cut it out with the labeling, already; he'd made his point. This intrigued him, and he'd been 'sister'-ing it up ever since.

"_De-rek_! Stop spacing and let me _out_!" She's fast approaching Maximum Exasperation. He can't wait to see what New Madness he's about to provoke, impatient to discover how far he can push her here, away from familiar support structures, in a world by far more twisty-difficult and alien than either of them could ever have anticipated, one (unexpectedly) large enough for them to exist in separate spaces for the first time in what feels like forever. "This isn't funny, Derek."

"Uh…yes it is." Still, he's glad her hair's down and unbound –the fewer sharp, decorative sticks and tiny, pointed bobby pins she's wearing, the fewer implements she has available to fashion into impromptu stabbing devices.

Casey goes through one or two of the breathing exercises he'd discovered in a pamphlet in her room Once Upon a Freakshow, weakly composing herself around her pending instability, waiting in the wings to be unleashed.

"_What_," she bites, setting her jaw, "do you _want_, Derek?" Rattling off a reproving series of 'tsks,'

"Casey, Casey, Casey; can't I just want to spend some quality time with the only family I've got here in Kingston?" She remains unmoved, glowering steadily. "Yeah, I wouldn't have bought that, either." He grabs the steering wheel in a loose grip and starts drumming a quiet, absent rhythm against age-frayed leather. "Still, who says I _want_ something? It's enough for me that I'm sabotaging your evening, Case. Really. I'm a man of simple pleasures."

"You're _about_ to be an idiot I'm strangling."

"Cute."

"_Der_—!" He swivels abruptly in his seat, slaps a hand over her mouth, and she squeaks into silence more out of shock than anything else.

"Let's say I _did_ want to ask for something, compensation-wise…" The initial bit of her rejoinder gets muffled against skin, his thoughts slipping every which way as her lips slide across his palm (isn't _that_ a strange sensation) –until she rips his arm away from her at the wrist and everything clicks back into place. He cuts her off before she can continue. "The price'd have to at _least_ match the cost. What's on the line, anyway?" Wryly, "Hot date, maybe?" And then, before she can answer, "Dude's not interested, you know. Conrad or Carol or whatever his name is." He's known The Guy's name perfectly well for weeks, of course, but his ostensible inability to remember it _really_ appears to piss her off, and Pissing Casey Off is one of his favorite pastimes, after all, so what's the harm in pretending?

"He—you—that is not—ughh!" She sputters. "Also, it's none of your business!" Then she huffs, biting her lip. Derek can tell she wants to snatch for the bait; he can _feel_ it, and he's really enjoying watching her try to repress the urge to demand more information. "What do _you_ know, anyway, huh? You've met him all of what, twice? You—you can't even remember his _name_."

"Don't have to. Trust me, Case. Guys can always tell when another guy's interested in a girl. Aaaand also, when he isn't. Just like you chicks have some weird-freaky intuition about other chicks."

"That's not called intuition, Derek; it's called 'paying attention.' You know, that thing you never, ever do?"

"Ah."

Then,

"And anyway, I stopped trusting your 'male intuition' forever ago, after you tried to convince me Sam wasn't interested in me when he actually was." Her eyes narrow at the memory. "You'll understand if I immediately don't believe you now."

Apparently finished waiting for him to comply with her orders, Casey begins casually fidgeting with the door handle, gently nudging her shoulder against the frame in an attempt to prize it open and escape. Derek'd tried this maneuver himself when he'd first realized it wouldn't open; he'd wedged his full body weight against it, kicked and driven into it with feet, palms, and forearms –all to no avail. It's going to be fun watching Casey experience this same frustration. There is just no end to her entertainment value. "And besides," she pauses to consider her quandary, "I thought we agreed to stay _out_ of each other's love lives."

A beat,

"Yeeeah, that went out the window when you started publicly campaigning against girls dating me." She spares him an irritated scowl before she twists in her seat, bracing her feet against the door to push outward when she gives the handle a sturdy tug.

"What part of 'despicable cad' don't you get? I can't just sit idly by while you're going around remorselessly playing with peoples' feelings. You are an _enemy of women_." This tactic, too, turns out to be an exercise in failure. Casey smacks at the window pane with a shrill, frustrated cry, delivering a sharp kick against the metal in frustration. He openly laughs at her when she hunches over in pain, nursing her newly-injured toes, which she seems to have forgotten are mostly bare in her strappy heels.

"Either way; turnabout's fair play, payback's a bitch, and, well, you know the rest." Her answering glare is like acid wash. "Also, please stop manhandling the Prince. He's delicate."

"I wouldn't _need_ to manhandle the Prince if you'd _let me out_." Casey slowly sits back up, determinedly returning her attention to divining the Secrets of the Unbudging Door, staring at it in such a way that he begins to wonder if she's not hoping it'll eventually pop open on its own if she just stares at it long enough. After a moment, her fingers brush thoughtfully over the window lever ruins, and she throws him a suspicious, searching look that he receives with swift, unassailable astonishment, as though he has no idea why she's staring at him like that. "What happened to the window knob?" He shifts a baffled look over her knees at the ravaged fixture in question.

"Huh. Would you look at that." His lips quirk in mock commiseration. "Guess you'd better just settle in for a looooong evening with your dear old brother, Derek."

"Step," she amends, and he catches her glancing away when she says it. (And isn't _that_ interesting?) Before he has the chance to poke at this curiosity, she swerves back into Dangerous Mode. "And I'm not settling in for anything; you _promised_ me you'd take me to this party, Derek—"

"Um, hello," he cuts in, "we're here, aren't we?" He indicates forward, where several houses down the distant lights and noise of the festivities echo toward them. She lets out a peal of wordless, girlish indignation.

"You—you are letting me _out_ of this vehicle, Derek Venturi, or I'm going to…to…to-to call mom and, and George!" She grimaces, knowing immediately her intimidation has fallen flat.

"Let me get this straight." He says slowly. "You're threatening to tattle on me...to our parents?" Casey flushes in embarrassment, but dives stubbornly into her purse for her phone when Derek starts laughing at her. Again.

"Y-yeah, we'll…we'll see who's laughing when George _disowns _you!" This only makes him laugh harder. "Besides, I don't _have_ to tell our parents; I can just give Jen a call. Or better yet, _Connor_—" In the split-second she holds her phone triumphantly aloft, flashing it like a beacon of certain victory, he snatches it nimbly out of her grasp (before he even fully realizes he's reached for it), flipping it into the opposite hand and sliding it neatly into his pocket. Then, smooth-as-can-be, he props his arms up behind his head and settles back smugly into the embrace of warm leather, worn and soft.

This is when Casey's Crazy breaks free (he thinks he can almost hear the lock snapping); one minute he's wallowing in Smug, the next his step-sister's (literally) thrown herself at him, stretched bodily across his lap as she scrabbles for her stolen item, hands recklessly grappling with cloth, fingers fumbling in alarming proximity to a region of his body he generally reserves for girls _not_ legally-related to him. Belatedly, he remembers to fight back, catching her wrists and dragging her forward when she tries to wrestle out of his hold. He hears her hip slamming into the middle compartment, but in the instinctive instant he uses trying to assess whether or not he'd actually hurt her, Casey manages to pull one of her wrists free and angle it back toward his pocket –and then she hesitates, and purely by intuition (or his having been 'paying attention'), he snaps a hand out to cover the door handle, _just_ as hers darts toward it.

Fuming at being beaten to the punch, Casey begins picking herself up where she's strewn across him, driving her elbows deliberately into his thigh on the way. He flicks her shoulder, hard. She lifts a hand to reciprocate, and then stiffens to a halt inches from his chest, face splitting into horror (really, obviously _staged_ horror), changing her hand's trajectory to point out his window. Derek, Seasoned Master of Manipulation, is not fooled; he doesn't fall for her stale, pathetic ruse –he really, really doesn't. Actually, instead of reflexively following the line of sudden movement, his eyes graft onto the fingers of Casey's _other_ hand, tensed into a clutching hold at his thigh, where a dizzy pulse of painful awareness emanates.

Either way, he supposes, her diversion works, because in the instant he drops his gaze (and pretty much _all_ of his attention), she scrambles for the door, batting his hand aside and rushing to shuffle over him with frenzied, clumsy haste, purse forsaken on the opposite floorboard, knees wedging unpleasantly into his thighs. In his distraction, she manages to pull herself completely over the partition before he reacts, fastening his hands at Casey's waist and jerking her forward, jarring her away from the handle, inciting an extremely uncomfortable tussle in the space that _isn't_ available for them to engage in any sort of physical combat in the first place, and he isn't surprised when her elbow smashes into the car horn, or when she (accidentally?) nails him in the gut.

He _is_ surprised when her legs (mostly bare, no thanks to that horrible, no good, very bad skirt) press into him, warm, firm pressure at either hip; he takes a senseless moment's respite to reconcile the crude barrier around him as being Casey's thighs. It takes him a second longer to attach this reality to the implication that Casey's…sitting in his lap.

And that's when the seat collapses beneath them.

* * *

There are furrows in the surface of his mind which are exceedingly receptive to certain shapes of information, and there is, simply put, no guarding against it. One such (well-loved) shape is the one formed by the weight of Hot-Girl-in-his-lap, on-top-of-him, breathing-heavily. The program for _this_ girl doesn't fit the script for this scenario, and he finds himself at a sudden, dreadful loss for what the hell he should be doing with himself.

Something calculating flickers in her gaze, locked as it is with his, slathering uneasy confusion all over his throbbing, anxious tension.

In the following instant, Casey pulls herself up onto her forearms, and he sees her swallow heavily, hears her breath tremble, and then the fingers of her right hand are at his temple, gently sweeping hair out of his eyes, quivering over the contour of his jaw, shaking badly when her thumb reaches the lower limit of his lips. Something pulls itself taut in his chest and then begins hammering away like crazy.

He can find nothing to say except her name, an urgent question hanging heavy between them, unspoken and unequivocal.

In response, she lowers herself slowly against him, and his free hand only lands at her hip because he's got nowhere else to put it. She flinches visibly at the contact, sucking in a breath that shatters the oppressive silence settling between them. Her eyes are wide when her gaze crashes into his, sudden indecision flying across her face in response to the dark, unstoppable grin on his.

A curious admixture of impulse and inspiration wrench an unplanned challenge right out of him.

"You don't," he starts, swallows, tries again, "you don't have it in you, Case." His fingers tense at her waist. "Kissing your step-brother?" He rasps, smirking. "That's the sort of dangerous living Keeners for Life just don't do." Her breath smells like mint. He wills himself not to move; if he moves, he's going to do something ridiculous, stupid, and _insane._ This is Casey's moment of defeat, not his. "You got nothin', princess." She still looks nervous, uncertain. Afraid.

Derek's not going to give her the chance to outmaneuver him or, worse, turn back. He lifts his mouth to her ear, ignoring the tight knot that forms in his stomach when he whispers "_coward_" against the shell and she draws in a sharp, heavy breath. He pulls back (when, maddeningly, all he can think of doing is pulling closer), and the air shivers, scalding, in the diminishing space between them.

"Derek," she says (it sounds like resolve), and his eyes snap to her lips with a kind of fierce, sordid anticipation. The hand yet laid out over the door handle slips down to join its counterpart at her hips, where his fingers tighten painfully. She doesn't seem to notice, and with nothing save the width of final reservations separating them, his eyelids slip closed.

"Casey," he grates, and then.

'_Click_.' It takes several full, bewildering seconds to understand what the sound means, and by this point, Casey's tripping over her shoes as she pulls herself off of the sidewalk, where she's just crash-landed. When she sees him at last coming to his senses, she kicks off both of her heels and bolts for the party.

...

_Son of a bi_—

* * *

And off Derek goes, to drink himself stupid. We have reached the leading edge of his amnesia.

Sorry to those of you genuinely looking forward to mention of Captain Planet.

His scene had to be cut from the production. We couldn't get a satisfying take; he kept coming to work belligerent, unintelligible, and stinking of radioactive waste, which as we all know, is a highly inebriating substance when imbibed by Earth's favorite spandexed, environmental superhero. Last I heard, he'd been voluntarily enrolled in a rehabilitation facility.

Godspeed, Planet.

Meanwhile.

I am _convinced_ that Casey's a vixen. For sure. With all Casey-ish trepidations attached, sure, but a vixen nevertheless.

Next chapter: Derek investigates. After he fixes himself a sandwich, anyway.

(One last chapter of Derek before we drop in on what will doubtlessly be the Emotional Wreckage that is Casey.)


	6. death of the superego

Love, guys.

Somuchsomuch love for the lot o' ye, swell and perfect, all. My ego thanks you dearly.

(ereshkigalgirl, you know i'm WEAK for the Casey-puppy-face. damn you. and bsloths, i am seriously going to find and hug you. fair warning.)

[a disclaimer by any other name would smell as sweet]

* * *

Derek drags a palm across his face, squirming uncomfortably as his memory slams to a halt, blackness fraying at the edges of the film reel throughout Casey's 'Dead Sprint' scene, the footage slowing, skipping and splitting, and then abruptly crashing into dark, impenetrable oblivion.

Beyond this point, no matter the effort he spares to probe deeper, he finds himself unable to recover the coveted information; his brain pan has been thoroughly scrubbed clean, and in the space where Last Night belongs, there is now only empty, ambiguous Nothing.

It figures he'd remember her sly, seedy con and _not_ any of the later action said deception must surely have inspired him to undertake. 'Him,' because Derek has no suspicions that she'd been the one to start It; Casey's done a lot of integrity-compromising, conscience-betraying things in the course of her Unending Effort to destroy him –lied, cheated, stolen, all—but initiating…_That _with someone under her care, drunk and possibly injured and most certainly out of his mind? That is one line he cannot imagine her crossing.

Which is only one of the many, many unpleasant reasons he's becoming gradually ever-more urgently obsessed with finding out what the hell The Happening entailed, exactly. Because even if he (most definitely) started it…how had it managed to progress far enough for him to have given her a hickey, or for her to have _scratched_ him? How had he ended up in his bed in only his boxers, why the _hell_ had Casey been re-dressing in his bedroom this morning, and at what point in the midst of The Happening had Casey stopped to do his laundry? (He'd found it on the washer unit in a basket; full, folded, and fragrant. It'd very nearly been his breaking point.)

If he hadn't forced her, then…then…any way he looks at it, Casey's still guilty of complicity.

It takes him a moment to fully appreciate the implications of this revelation. And then a few more to decide to focus the entirety of his life around the single goal of finding out what, precisely, had gone down between Casey and himself after she'd escaped his cunning imprisonment.

He has to _know_ –had she had anything to drink? She'd apparently been sober enough for the hospital staff to let her drive him home, but he has no way of knowing for sure if she'd been drinking earlier in the evening, and if so, how much or how quickly. Who knows? Concern for his welfare after his alleged stair-tumble may well have trumped her better judgment when she'd driven him to the hospital. The local ER'd been just a five-minute hop from the party anyway; maybe she'd convinced herself she could risk it.

After that, there's no telling how long they'd spent at the hospital, Casey anxiously sobering up all the while (he's got this hilarious image of her in his head, wide-eyed and edgy, paranoid and stiff, petrified of being discovered), and he's definitely got no idea at what single point in _his_ cumulative inebriated experience the Shameful Cavorting had taken place, or --most importantly-- if Casey's (willing!) participation had been more the result of a sound mind or residual, liquid impulse –and delineating where one possibility ends and the other begins has become suddenly, unbelievably important. Dire, even.

The dreadful part (in this fiasco heaped high with horror) is that his curiosity's about more than just discerning where the hell they both stand now in their Perpetual War, which _should_ be the only --or at least vastly more vital-- matter at hand. The unspeakable truth, he realizes, is that that's just the excuse. Because beneath this reality is a tiny island's worth of underlying motivations, kicking and screaming their way to the surface, the lot of them clinging and vicious and _terrifying_, all of them appearing to indicate Very Bad Things about his feelings regarding Casey. The primary Bad Thing being that this probably means he _has _feelings regarding Casey.

And that, that can't be a good sign.

Feelings, Apathy-Aficionado-Derek knows, are problems in the first place; if you open the door for one, others might slip in without you noticing. And even the ones you manage to shut out slowly begin harboring bitter feelings of their own, and together they eventually break _down_ the goddamn door, after which the things start flooding in unchecked and then go freely fucking _crazy_, morphing seamlessly from annoying to uncontrollable in the nanosecond flash of a severed neuron.

And then you're a _woman_.

…still, The Happening is not without its share of intriguing possibility; to start, it's something he's planning to hold over her for, oh, let's see…the rest of her natural life, at least. (Beyond that, they'll have to negotiate.) Also, Derek's looking forward to learning what Fun New Privileges her misconduct has earned him. If he has to put up with this insidious '_feeling_' business, he's at least going to make her as miserable as possible in the meantime.

A disquieting thought follows immediately on the heels of this decision, a wayward, unassuming little thing, almost flippantly remarking that when it comes to Casey, he's never quite been able to tell whether he wants more to hate and scream at her or throw her against the nearest wall and tear off her clothes, but that now, happily, this very uncomfortable (and peculiarly frequent) dilemma may well have been resolved at last.

He sinks into the cushions with a groan of self-pitying despair, low with the injustice of a spiteful, bastard god. Derek swears bloody vengeance by Casey's honor --and then promptly reconsiders, opting instead to reserve judgment until after he's had the chance to launch an Official Investigation.

…speaking of which –it's time for an Official Investigation.

Or, no, wait.

Frozen pizza, afternoon nap, and _then_ time for an Official Investigation.

* * *

Next bit probably won't be up until finals are over this coming week, but I think I might possibly know what's going to happen, so that's something.

There'll definitely be more going on than just introspection, promise.

I'll warn you, though.

Derek's probably going to molest Casey a bit, and I figure she's likely to deliver on her infamous 'face-ripping' threat if he doesn't WATCH HISSELF.

But secretly she'll enjoy it. And then she'll Angst Prettily all over her FORBIDDEN ELATION.

CAPSLOCK IS FUN.

(Also, more deets on Last Night!)


	7. hysteria

OVER NINE THOUSAND (!) YEARS OVERDUE.*

but WLS (daaaaaarliiiiiiiing!), thebucketwoman, and snapple all had new contributions to the fandom, which provided just the push i needed to finish this chapter up and get it posted.

HENCE:

[in communist russia, disclaimer makes YOU.]

* * *

Casey doesn't cry. She doesn't shake herself into the throes of a panic attack, scream, pass out, or hop the next bus back home to cling desperately to her mother, whose miraculous abilities to Kiss the Boo-Boo Better have yet to fail her in some nineteen years of Casey-style freak outs (-but only because she suspects this's one case even her mom can't magically make right). She doesn't throw herself into oncoming traffic, PTSD all over anyone unlucky enough to be in her immediate vicinity, or hunt down a Mounty and attempt to convince the stoic officer she should be behind bars, locked away from the respectable society she has _spurned_.

And she absolutely, positively, definitely _doesn't cry_.

She _does_ spend her morning anxiously tidying her Immutable Laws of the Universe, setting them neatly in order and polishing old ones for sheen, most notably and preeminently the edict concerning Derek Venturi's long-standing distinction as Public Enemy Number One.

Once dually Official Mandate and conventional wisdom, the facts of Derek's inherent vile-despicable-contemptibility have been left gathering dust for the past good long while, shelved for a probationary period and then forgotten somewhere between the night (so long ago now) he'd called her father to come back for her and his later noble, impromptu leap to her defense against Truman's public infamy.

Now more than ever, she's in need of a refresher course in the materials, and she's been carefully revisiting every last detail of Derek's jerkability, leaving no stone unturned in her (urgent) quest to uncover either reason or sound justification for what'd happened Last Night –whichever turns up first will do.

The trek from Derek's apartment to her dorm feels interminable, seeming to take much, much longer than it ever had before –made all the more awkward-miserable by her lack of footwear and missing purse –both of which had been lost or forgotten in (or near) Derek's car at separate points during the course of Last Night's events.

Still, in spite of the catastrophe she's expecting to encounter en route (perhaps a by-passing busload of nuns who will point and gawk and genuflect at her in horror, or possibly one of her professors on the way to/from class, who will have her expelled for public indecency), she makes it back without incident, although by the time she reaches the door to her dorm room, she's worked herself into a psychological frenzy _just_ shy of stark raving mad, and it takes her a good five minutes to compose herself before she can summon the courage to lift her hand and knock.

When finally she does, another several, emotionally turbulent seconds pass before Ethan Shore –the lanky-rebel musician to her roommate Swinn's free-spirited artist—opens the door, hefting a brow, appraising her. A long, slow, _painfully_ amused smile stretches wide across his face while the various juicy bits and pieces fall into place (-her disheveled appearance, her conspicuously bare, dirty feet, the ever-darkening Beacon of Scandal at her throat-); mortified, she watches his sharp mind working itself around the contours of a (likely unflatteringly salacious) Theory.

Miraculously, Casey doesn't hyperventilate or go into shock. More stunning still, she remains perfectly calm, even manages a tiny, quivering smile.

"Misplace your keys last night, chickie?" The way he says it _bleeds_ insinuation, and all the air in her body comes whooshing up out of her at once. She laughs –manically—to obscure her discomfiture, trying to remember whether or not it's possible to actually _die_ of embarrassment.

"Th-thanks for getting the door, Ethan." She manages, absently astonished at her own (tightly-strained) fortitude.

Before she can take another step over the threshold,

"Casey McDonald, on the Walk of Shame. Honestly never thought I'd live to see the day." Swinn's boyfriend chuckles teasingly at her shame-faced wretchedness, interest clearly piqued. "Who's the lucky laddie?" Casey blanches, feeling suddenly faint. No longer able to suffer his cheerfully penetrating scrutiny, she shoulders past him, head ducked and shoulders stiff.

She's maybe a foot from her bedroom door when she knocks bodily into Swinn, Ethan's (perpetually smocked and paint-encrusted) better half and occasionally –when she isn't living at the campus studio arts center or shacked up with aforementioned Significant Other—the patient temper to Casey's various Jenny-branded (and Derek-exacerbated) neuroses.

Swinn gracefully steadies Casey at the elbow, frowning when she, too, takes stock of her frumped appearance.

"Whoa –what the hell happened to _you_ last night, kiddo?"

And that's all it takes, apparently, to break her.

Casey crumples to the floor, dissolving helplessly into a blubbery, wailing mess, hardly even aware of Swinn pulling her into a sturdy, paint-heady embrace, less conscious still of being dragged into her bedroom and deposited on her over-stuffed mattress, lost to her own violently oscillating emotions, which swing from guilty-and-ashamed to angry-and-incredulous to fantastically miserable-and-anxious and virtually everywhere in between, uncontrollably and without reprieve.

At length, Swinn's patient ministrations soothe her into a sort of blissful-sweet, diligently cultivated oblivion, and in the wake of her pacification, Ethan nudges into her bedroom with two cups of coffee and a sheepish grin. After a muttered apology she mostly ignores (more out of preoccupation than to be intentionally rude), Swinn quietly shoos him out and then carefully shoves the steaming, unsweetened beverage into Casey's hands. She takes a hesitant sip and finds herself almost glad for the acrid-bitter taste.

"So…" Swinn starts, bringing her own cup to her lips for a drink, "Obviously I missed out on some primo action when I skipped out early last night; last I saw, you and Connor were finally hitting it off." Tilting her head to try and catch Casey's eye, "We gonna have to send Jen to castrate anybody? Connor didn't—"

"No." Casey asserts softly, heading off that line of thought, vacantly eyeing her darkened reflection in the murky liquid.

After a pause,

"Well…look, clearly you don't wanna get into this at the moment, which I can respect, but I'd really rather you dished to _me_ before Jen finds you, jumps to her own conclusions, and rips some poor boy a new one in defense of your honor." She smiles mischievously. "Unless that's what you want…?" In spite of herself, Casey grins, a wan quirk of lips that vanishes as quickly as it appears.

She takes a deep, steadying breath, fingers distractedly curving the rim of her mug while she focuses on maintaining her brittle composure.

"Connor was a perfect gentleman." She swears. "If…if anyone needs their honor defended it's—" She hesitates, suddenly unsure she should be discussing this –with _anyone_. "It's, um…not me."

Briefly, she meditates on the wisdom of discretion, afraid what Swinn will think of her, terrified that putting voice to her misdeeds will somehow make them…_real_. For the moment, with Derek's memory having been conveniently scrubbed clean, Casey's the only one who knows What Really Happened before-during-and-after the party. If she keeps quiet, then she'll _always_ be the only one who knows –why, if she wanted, she could pretend Last Night had never happened at all!

Except…it _had_. And she knows herself better than to think she's even capable of keeping something this crazy-huge to herself, supposing she wanted to. It'd just eat at her until it inevitably came spilling out of her, probably –with her luck—at the worst possible time. Like, say, in the middle of dinner with the fam, the next time she goes home for a visit.

And, perhaps more importantly, Derek Venturi she is _not_; even when the truth is painful, Casey McDonald fearlessly confronts it, the better to understand it, the better to move past it, and to learn from it so as to never, _ever_ repeat her mistakes. (She ignores the impudent little part of her contending that when it comes to Derek, she's never been quite able to avoid making the same mistakes over and over again –often through dastardly coercion though _always _of her own volition.) Derek suppresses his feelings, denies to everyone he's even got any, refusing –like a coward—to face reality. But she's never been able to be anything than completely honest with herself, and with others, even when she attempts otherwise.

She's not going to run away; she's going to be mature about this, discuss her problems like a responsible adult, find a sensible solution. The only way to deal with this is to…well, _deal_ with it, talk about it, air it out, let an unbiased third party tell her just how disgusting and awful and unforgivable she really is.

Taking a deep, deep breath –and then another, and then one more, just in case, she begins slowly recounting Last Night's scandalous developments.

* * *

"Huh." Murmurs Swinn after a thoughtful moment, "I _thought _I'd been getting a 'Flowers in the Attic' kinda vibe from you two…' Casey pales. Swinn frantically backpedals. "Kidding –I'm totally kidding, Case." Then, probably to head off another wave of The Weepies, "So…what're you gonna do about it?" Casey blinks.

"Avoid him like the plague?" She ventures, hopeful.

"Or…_talk_ to him about it?"

Incredulously, "Have you _met_ Derek? He doesn't _do_ the 'talking' thing. Even if I _wanted_ to talk to him –and I don't—he'd just shrug me off or insult me or completely ignore me or any of the number of horrible things he routinely does when I try to have a civilized conversation with him. Believe me, he's probably thanking his lucky stars he doesn't remember, because it means he can set it aside, like it never happened. It means he doesn't _have_ to deal with it."

"Still, you don't think he…deserves to know?" Casey bites her lip, eyes watering.

"I…Swinn, I _can't_. I can't tell him. Even if he didn't lord it over me for the rest of my natural-born life, he'd still…he'd hate me for sure. I mean, for _real_, and not in the obligatory bitter-sibling-rivalry sort of way."

After a contemplative moment,

"Casey…how do _you_ feel about it?" Casey nervously chucks her gaze left, meaning to pointedly avoid answering the Real Question at all costs.

"Ashamed, obviously." There's something discerning and faintly disappointed in her roommate's expression. "It was a _mistake_, Swinn." She insists.

"I never said it wasn't."

"It'll never, _ever_ happen again."

Blank-faced, "I never said it would."

Sighing heavily,

"…I have to tell him, don't I?"

"That's up to you, Space Case. But telling him is definitely the _right _thing to do."

She thinks she's beginning to understand why Derek murdered _his_ conscience.

* * *

Casey declares herself fit for class before the third of four classes back-to-back, clinging to the time-honored wisdom that the best remedy for a tortured mind is to keep it focused elsewhere, a solution she's hoping the solace of education will be able to facilitate.

Swinn objects initially, but ultimately relents with the promise of More Information to Follow, once Casey's had the opportunity to distance herself from the events of Last Night, that she might revisit them later with a clearer head.

She's just managed to lose herself in the privations of eighteenth-century France when Derek saunters into the audience hall, gaze panning immediately toward her, drawn as if by magnetism; one cryptic, jerk-bastard leer later, he's making a bee-line straight for her.

Casey's first instincts scream at her to RUN-DAMMIT-RUN, but her sense of decorum forbids it; they're in the middle of lecture, anyway –what's the worst he can do?

Derek _winks_ at her, and –damn it all to hell—who does she think she's kidding, anyhow? What's the worst he _couldn't_ do?

Exactly twenty-one steps later (not that she's counting), he takes her swiveling chair's twin, sitting brazenly beside her, still openly staring at her with that wry, alarming, lop-sided grin, and Casey reels against the anxious anemia threatening to steal her breath away. She sees one, two-three, four-and-five sets of eyes darting toward them, flickering with recognition at Derek Venturi, star hockey forward, and promptly begins making a conscious effort to calm herself.

_Composure. Composure, Casey. Breathe in, out, swallow, smile –keep breathing, dolt! _

She spins her gaze in Derek's direction in time to catch his grin twisting, a hint of cruelty in the expression when he casually levels a finger at her, off the end of which dangles an innocuous-looking pair of red buttons strung together by what appears to her to be an old guitar chord.

…!

She…she _recognizes_ those buttons—

Casey chokes when she screws up the order of her mental check list, and nearly has a coronary when Derek's hand smoothes over her shoulder, rapping softly at the blade, fingers sliding (a torturous, whispering glide) sideways and following the line of her spine to a point on her back low enough that its insinuation is unmistakable, though high enough up to avoid being an open impropriety.

Her professor's saying something about the Bastille, but Casey is no longer able to perform such higher-order functions as paying attention or breathing; she's suffocating, there's not enough air in this massive audience hall, why the heck is everyone just sitting there like nothing's happening when it feels like she's exploding out of her skin-?

She snaps left when his fingers skate across to her hip, cinching pressure she feels tugging tight in her belly, and then—

"Hey there, _Casey_…" He whispers, testing her reaction. Her fingers convulse where they grip her pen, and she unwittingly gives him (and, er, everyone else) the satisfaction of dropping her wits all over the floor in humiliating fashion.

"Bathroom!" She spontaneously announces (to the entire class, ripping right through her professor in mid-sentence as she does so), slapping her notebook closed and snapping automatically to her feet. Having now made ritual spectacle of herself, she begins scooting down the row, losing her footing only once (which, considering the circumstances, she finds nothing short of miraculous), and refusing to spare so much as glance behind her to make sure Derek is following suit.

She knows he is; she can hear him falling into step, can feel the self-satisfaction rolling off of him in waves.

* * *

As soon as the heavy door swings shut, Casey rounds on him, fingers twisting the fabric of his collar as she backs him against the wall, as he _lets_ her back him against the wall—

"I'm having the _craziest_ deja vu right now–this happened last night, too, didn't it?"

She looks appalled and throws a hand over his mouth, checking frantically in all conceivable directions to make sure no one has overheard. Only once she's satisfied no living thing is anywhere within earshot does she finally remove her impromptu muzzle and take a step backward, also un-fisting the other hand from his shirt as she goes, goggling at her fingers for a brief moment, like she can't quite understand how they'd gotten where they'd been. (This is already going much, much better than he'd imagined.)

"_Stop it, Derek_!" She whispers. "Don't you know everyone thinks we're—" She swallows the last part of the statement, as though she'd been made suddenly aware she was on the verge of disclosing a huge, ugly secret, "si-siblings. God, what must everyone think of me?"

"Shouldn't you be more worried about what your psychiatrist is going to think of you?"

"Who? You mean, Paul?"

"…who now?"

"My guidance counselor." He stares at her. "From SJS?" Thrown –and frankly a little disturbed at the idea that she might still be keeping in touch with her high school guidance counselor—Derek takes several seconds to climb back to his verbal feet.

"What? No, sis, I mean the shrinker who gets dibs on your fluffy-white cell when the fam has you committed." He eyes the high collar covering her throat, and graciously _doesn't_ point out that it's hardly cold enough yet to justify her wearing it. "You know, for molesting your broth—" In what he hopes is developing into a pattern, her hand flies right back over his mouth. She looks, for an instant, like she's about to erupt –with anger or tears or both (which excites and terrifies him, respectively)—and then her face abruptly…closes.

…_okay, weird._

She looks straight at him, and he gets the unpleasant sense she's about to try and sell her 'nothing happened' fiction to him all over again.

"Case," –tic- "It's not a problem. I know I'm very hard to resist." He's _trying_ to lighten the mood. What he actually achieves, however, is an atmosphere quite the opposite of 'light.'

Casey blinks back tears, clinging desperately to familiar resentment and easy frustration, and –frighteningly—he's seized by the inexplicable urge to do or say something that might be construed by some as 'comforting.' When he attempts to crush said urge out of existence, he's further shocked to discover that, in the three or four micro-seconds since it'd developed, it has become somehow indestructible.

For the second time in (likely) just as many minutes, she realizes with a start she's still touching him and jerks her hand back –a retreat he intercepts, catching her at the wrist on the rebound, an impulsive capture he executes without any real notion of why he's doing it.

"Casey…" He grumbles, and _feels_ her tensing in his grasp. (And just what the hell _is_ that, anyway?) "We both know you're gonna spill eventually; can't we just cut out the middle part this time and maybe skip to the end, where you tell me what the hell happened last night?" This's the only time he's planning to ask her without attaching some horrible prank to the question, a benevolent, one-time use 'get out of jail free' card, if you will.

"I told you already, _nothing_. Unless you're looking for details about your stunning acrobatic performance on the staircase?" He appreciates the role-reversal; instead of her hurling scorn from her pedestal, she's ducking her head, refusing to meet his eyes, a fascinating cocktail of guilt and shame and mortification. (And yet, even without the pedestal, she gets in a solid shot to his ego.)

Tsking disappointedly, "The Hard Way it is, then."

He starts to warn her not to come complaining to him when he's forced to make her life miserable until she inevitably caves and gives him what he wants, but stops, supposing he should cut the poor kid a break –at least for now. After all, he's got the whole entire rest of his life to hold this over her head, and _she_ looks one shade of white away from corpse-pallor; he'll give her formal notice of her Imminent Suffering some other time, when she looks better equipped to handle the news.

Good Deed for the day, check.

He's maybe half-a-heartbeat from releasing her and continuing on his merry way, twirling her buttons 'round his finger and maybe whistling a ditty to further unsettle her as he goes, when she abruptly pulls the rug out from under him and begins worriedly chewing her lip.

It's nothing he hasn't seen her do fifteen times a day for like, six years now, and hardly anything to get worked up about. Or even _notice_, for that matter.

Then again, this's the first time he's seen her do it since he'd woken up this morning to the sight of her dressing herself in his bedroom, since he'd found a hickey on her neck and damning score marks on his back, so maybe he's got good reason to feel a bit…bothered.

He considers doing something astonishingly stupid for a full moment before it dawns on him that for the full breadth of this moment, he's been staring at her mouth.

Whatever his face is doing can't be good, he decides. Otherwise, she wouldn't be looking at him like he'd just kicked a puppy. (Or maybe a kitten –Casey has some weird vendetta against fluffy critters of the canine persuasion.)

* * *

Derek is staring.

At her mouth.

From this point-blank range, there's simply no mistaking it.

…and there's that _look, _focused, intense, _determined_—in a fractured instant, it all comes screaming back.

_Her name scrapes from his throat, and there is impossible awareness in his liquor-addled gaze, thoughtful recognition behind the wild mindlessness that has her inexplicably choking back a sob._

_She pushes him away._

"_Stop." Still trembling, breathing heavily, she cups her hands against his jaw. "What are we doing?" He looks like he's focusing very, very hard. After a weirdly comfortable stretch of silence, Derek clears his throat and pulls off a fair approximation of his usual incredulous disdain._

"_Casey," he starts, "this is more a 'show' than a 'tell' kinda activity. I hope you're not really expecting me to explain how this works." Then he smiles, a playful-friendly, mischievous grin, and kisses her cheek. She can't help the giddy rush of adrenaline that spirals through her, concentrated low in her abdomen, when he looks at her and really looks like he's __**looking at her**__, like he's surfaced and sober enough to know precisely what he's started, like he's wanted this forever and needed only the excuse of alcohol and the right opportunity to provide pretext, like he'd definitely remember it –like he'd __**never**__ forget it. "Yes or no?" He demands, clearly willing her to choose the former._

_And even though he still reeks of alcohol, even though he's possibly concussed and she's almost certain she still hates him and __**positive**__ she doesn't trust him, she's not even a little surprised when she finds the voice to respond, breathless,_

"_Yes." _

Just like Last Night, she detaches herself from his person, shoves away with a horrified, broken expression.

"Case—" He begins, but she doesn't wait for him to say anything more.

"I—I have to go." And she does, at a dead sprint.

* * *

*le horror!*

all signs appear to point to SEX.

hooraaaaaay!

next chapter: derek drinks himself stupid for clues, wears football helmet.

*purloined from IchiRamen Girl ^_^


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